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You’re one among millions, not one in a million.

Diana Chow is a music producer and artist based in Los Angeles. Prior to her music career, she was a Software Engineer at Twitter.

Lower the barrier and master the art of the start.

Listen now (14 min) | Plus Three other rules of thumb for real estate

Office hours, week #2

Read our article - On Needing to Find Something to Worry About — Why We Always Worry for No Reason. The School Of Life has a huge collection of interesting articles, read now.

What makes a work of art beautiful?

“Just win baby.” —Al Davis This post is dedicated to the late Al Davis. Rest in peace. Back in the bad old days when I was running Loudcloud, I thought to myself: how could I have possibly prepared for this? …

Interesting perspective sharing on what I read as really being addicted to the feed, or the new. We love the little reward we get from discovering a new video, a new post, a new whatever. Tarun sounds like they are pretty deep, but any of us that randomly pull out our phone and “pull to refresh” a feed are experiencing a very similar thing.

It’s a stepping-stone, not a compromise. The media and our culture push us to build something for everyone, to sand off the edges and to invest in infrastructure toward scale. But it turns ou…

Good overview of Getting Things Done. I’ve been a practitioner of GTD for over a decade now. I consider it a life skill, something that I will focus on and improve on over many years. What GTD gives you—when understood and implemented properly—is a foolproof system for keeping track of what you need to do, should do, or should consider to do. When your system and your trust in your system is in place, your subconsciousness will stop keeping track of all the things you need to do and stop constantly reminding you. This reduces stress and frees up precious brain time to more productive thinking—maybe it even saves real time so that you have more time for ballet lessons, painting classes, and roller-blading. I like that this highlights the true benefit of GTD. It is not a productivity system to allow you to do even more, although you may be able to. It is intended to allow you to be in the moment, focus on the things in front of you, knowing that your trusted system has you covered. That you can forget about other things and it will be there when you need it.

“Turn it off and on” is a pretty normal recommendation when a computer isn’t working. It is one I don’t like, because in some way it seems like giving up on finding the solution to what went wrong. This article walking through the various state progression of the computer is a good way to think about this. At this point, any attempt to bring your system back directly from the broken state into a working state is improvisational. We are no longer like the classically trained violist from Juilliard performing a Mozart sonata after rehearsing it a thousand times; we are now playing jazz. And in the engineering of reliable systems, we do not want our systems to improvise. So, what should we do to fix the system? Turn it off, and turn it on again. Anything else is less principled. I like the “various layers of abstraction” view. Killing a process is just a smaller version of turning it off and on again. And yet, of course, we do not throw out our computers and buy new ones every time a program does something wrong. So the story of system repair is one of “turning it off and on again” at various layers of abstraction. At each layer, we hope that we can purge the corruption by discarding some compartmentalized state, and replacing it with a known start state, from which we can enter a highly reliable reinitialization sequence that ends in a working state. The ultimate conclusion of the article is that software that is more brittle, will break faster, and thus get fixed sooner. Ultimately an overall better thing for the system itself. While it is not referenced, this is a strong argument for strongly typed languages, amongst other things.

People are very good at forecasting the future, except for the surprises, which tend to be all that matter. Let me share a theory I have about risk and the right amount of savings required to offset it. The biggest risk is always what no one sees coming. If you don’t see something coming you’re not prepared for it. And when you’re not prepared for it its damage is amplified when it hits you. Look at the big news stories that move the needle – Covid, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the Great Depression. Their common trait isn’t necessarily that they were big; it’s that they were surprises, on virtually no one’s radar until they arrived. It’s like that every year. It’ll be like that every year. It’s been like that this year. The Economist – a magazine I admire – publishes a forecast of the year ahead each January. Its January 2020 issue does not mention a single word about Covid. Its January 2022 issue does not mention a single word about Russia invading Ukraine. That’s not a criticism – both events were impossible to know when the magazines were likely planned in November and written in December each year. But that’s the point: The biggest news, the biggest risks, the most consequential events, are always what you don’t see coming. How do you live with that? One truth is that if you’re only saving for the risks you can envision, you’ll be unprepared for the risks you can’t imagine every time. So the right amount of savings/security/liquidity is when it feels like it’s a little too much. It should feel excessive; it should make you wince a little. The same goes for how much debt you think you should handle – whatever you think it is, the reality is probably a little less. Your preparation shouldn’t make sense in a world where the biggest historical events all would have sounded absurd before they happened. Most of the time someone’s caught unprepared it’s not because they didn’t plan. Sometimes it’s the smartest planners in the world working tirelessly, mapping every scenario they can imagine, that end up failing. They planned for everything that made sense before getting hit by something they couldn’t fathom. The push to be efficient with your cash and hold as little as necessary explodes when inflation is high, because people become paranoid about losing purchasing power. But it’s times like these when people become too smart for their own good. In the drive to become efficient they try to envision exactly how much cash they’ll need in the future, and hold exactly that amount, nothing more. And then of course they’ll be unprepared when the inevitable surprise hits. It’s like that every year. It’ll be like that every year.

is it speed or certainty that you crave?

Bertrand Russell’s ten commandments for living are as relevant today as when originally formulated. Read this article to learn more ...

​ ​ ​ Against good habits This week, because I like a challenge, or perhaps just because I’m an annoying contrarian, I’d like to try to persuade you that cultivating good habits...

At the end of the day, stop somewhere fun — so it’s easier to get started tomorrow

Self-editing isn’t an optional, supplementary stage of writing. It is writing. It is in the edits, in stripping away all that is superfluous, self-indulgent or unclear, that truth begins to emerge

There's no rush.

The following is an excerpt from Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.

Halfway through last year, I found myself overwhelmed by my schedule. There were simply too many things to do and not enough time. As we bookworms tend to do, I set out to find books that would teach me to wrangle my schedule.

After I posted Tuesday's newsletter about how I hit an "invisible wall" at the edge of a map of my understanding, I came across these two familiar quotes: 1. "A

The thermometer read 19 degrees. The wind whipped louder than waves crashing on a beach. And I was zipped tight in a sleeping bag on top of a mountain. Action carried me away from comfort, and it was the only thing that could bring me back.  I wanted nothing more than a hot breakfast by t

Thirty-seven thousand Americans died in car accidents in 1955, six times today’s rate adjusted for miles driven. Ford began offering seat belts in every model that year. It was a $27 upgrade, equivalent to about $190 today. Research showed they reduced traffic fatalities by nearly 70%. But only 2% of customers opted for the upgrade. Ninety-eight percent of buyers preferred to remain at the mercy of inertia. Things eventually changed, but it took decades. Seatbelt usage was still under 15% in the early 1980s. It didn’t exceed 80% until the early 2000s – almost half a century after Ford offered them in all cars. It’s easy to underestimate how social norms stall change, even when the change is an obvious improvement. One of the strongest forces in the world is the urge to keep doing things as you’ve always done them, because people don’t like to be told they’ve been doing things wrong. Change eventually comes, but agonizingly slower than you might assume. Dunkirk was a miracle. More than 330,000 Allied soldiers, pinned down by Nazi attacks, were successfully evacuated from the beaches of France back to England, ferried by hundreds of small civilian boats. London broke out in celebration when the mission was completed. Few were more relieved than Winston Churchill, who feared the imminent destruction of his army. But Edmund Ironside, commander of British Home Forces, pointed out that if the Allies could quickly ferry a third of a million troops from France to England while avoiding aerial attack, the Germans probably could, too. Churchill had been holding onto hope that Germany couldn’t cross the Channel with an invasion force; such a daring mission seemed impossible. But then his own army proved it was quite possible. Dunkirk was both a success and a foreboding. Your competitors can probably innovate and execute as well as you can. So every time you uncover a new talent you’re proud of, temper your thrill with the acceptance that other people who want to win as badly as you probably aren’t far behind. Notorious BIG once casually mentioned that he began selling crack in fourth grade. He explained: They [teachers] was always like, “Take the talent that you have and think of something that you can do in the future with it.” And I was like, “Well, I like to draw.” So what could I do with drawing? What am I gonna be, an art dealer? I’m not gonna be that type. I was thinking maybe I can do big billboards and shit. Like commercial art. And then after that I got introduced to crack. Haha, now I’m thinking, commercial art?! Haha. I’m out here for 20 minutes and I can make some real, real money, man. Incentives drive everything, and most of us underestimate what we’d be willing to do if the incentives were right. Before launching themselves into space on rockets, NASA astronauts ran tests in high-altitude hot-air balloons. A balloon flight on May 4th, 1961, took American Victor Prather to 113,720 feet, scraping the edge of space. The goal was to test NASA’s new spacesuit. The flight was a success. The suit worked beautifully. As Prather descended back to earth, he opened the faceplate on his helmet when he was low enough to breathe on his own. He landed in the ocean as planned, but there was a small mishap: Prather slipped from his craft while connecting himself to the rescue helicopter’s line, falling into the ocean. The spacesuit should have been watertight and buoyant. But since Prather had opened his faceplate, he was now exposed to the elements. Water rushed into his suit. Prather drowned. Think of how much planning goes into launching someone to space. So much expertise, so many contingencies. So many what if’s and what then’s. Every detail is contemplated by thousands of expert workers. But even then – despite so much planning – a tiny thing no one had considered invites catastrophe. As Carl Richards says, risk is what’s left when you think you’ve thought of everything. When Barack Obama discussed running for president in 2005, his friend George Haywood – an accomplished investor – gave him a warning: the housing market was about to collapse, and would take the economy down with it. George told Obama how mortgage-backed securities worked, how they were being rated all wrong, how much risk was piling up, and how inevitable its collapse was. And it wasn’t just talk: George was short the mortgage market. Home prices kept rising for two years. By 2007, when cracks began showing, Obama checked in with George. Surely his bet was now paying off? Obama wrote in his memoir: George told me that he had been forced to abandon his short position after taking heavy losses. “I just don’t have enough cash to stay with the bet,” he said calmly enough, adding, “Apparently I’ve underestimated how willing people are to maintain a charade.” Irrational trends rarely follow rational timelines. Unsustainable things can last longer than you think. When the Black Death plague entered England in 1348, the Scots up north laughed at their good fortune. With the English crippled by disease, now was a perfect time for Scotland to stage an attack on its neighbor. The Scots huddled together thousands of troops in preparation for battle. Which, of course, is the worst possible move during a pandemic. “Before they could move, the savage mortality fell upon them too, scattering some in death and the rest in panic,” historian Barbara Tuchman writes in her book A Distant Mirror. There’s a powerful urge to think risk is something that happens to other people. Other people get unlucky, other people make dumb decisions, other people get swayed by the seduction of greed and fear. But you? Me? No, never us. False confidence makes the eventual reality all the more shocking. Some are more susceptible to risk than others, but no one is exempt from being humbled. Dr. Dan Goodman once performed surgery on a middle-aged woman whose cataract had left her blind since childhood. The cataract was removed, leaving the woman with near-perfect vision. A miraculous success. The patient returned for a checkup a few weeks later. The book Crashing Through writes: Her reaction startled Goodman. She had been happy and content as a blind person. Now sighted, she became anxious and depressed. She told him that she had spent her adult life on welfare and had never worked, married, or ventured far from home – a small existence to which she had become comfortably accustomed. Now, however, government officials told her that she no longer qualified for disability, and they expected her to get a job. Society wanted her to function normally. It was, she told Goldman, too much to handle. Every goal you dream about has a downside that’s easy to overlook. Historian John Meecham writes: When we condemn [the past] for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us? This applies to so many things. What is the modern version of cigarettes, which were doctor-recommended just a few generations ago? We didn’t know dinosaurs existed 200 years ago, which makes you wonder what else is out there that we’re oblivious to today. What company is the modern Enron, so obviously a fraud? What do most people – not a few wackos, but most of us – believe that will look something between hilarious and disgraceful 100 years from now? A lot of history is just gawking at how wrong, how blind, people can be. Disastrously wrong, embarrassingly blind. Millions of people, all at the same time. When you then realize that today will be considered history in a few generations … oh dear. It’s unpleasant. But also fascinating. Apollo 11 was the first time in history humans visited another celestial body. You’d think that would be an overwhelming experience – literally the coolest thing any human had ever done. But as the spacecraft hovered over the moon, Michael Collins turned to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and said: It’s amazing how quickly you adapt. It doesn’t seem weird at all to me to look out there and see the moon going by, you know? Three months later, after Al Bean walked on the moon during Apollo 12, he turned to astronaut Pete Conrad and said “It’s kind of like the song: Is that all there is?” Conrad was relieved, because he secretly felt the same, describing his moonwalk as spectacular but not momentous. Most mental upside comes from the thrill of anticipation – actual experiences tend to fall flat, and your mind quickly moves on to anticipating the next event. That’s how dopamine works. If walking on the moon left astronauts underwhelmed, what does it say about our own earthly goals and expectations? John Nash is one of the smartest mathematicians to ever live, winning the Nobel Prize. He was also schizophrenic, and spent most of his life convinced that aliens were sending him coded messages. In her book A Beautiful Mind, Silvia Nasar recounts a conversation between Nash and Harvard professor George Mackey: “How could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof, how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world?” Mackey asked. “Because,” Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, “the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.” This is a good example of a theory I have about very talented people: No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like. Unique minds have to be accepted as a full package. More: The Psychology of Money Five Lessons From History Death, Taxes and a Few Other Things

I collect books like the last one was printed yesterday . I can never have too many.  When my wife and I moved to our new home last year, I decided it was time to buy new book shelves. I wanted a matching set, and I wanted enough shelf space to hold my ever expanding collection. 

Here are my 10 best survival tips

I. A few months ago, I learned about Laszlo Polgar, the man who trained all three of his daughters to be chess grandmasters. He claimed he could make any child a genius just by teaching them using …

This is arguably the most important short reading I’ve done in a while. - Tim Ferriss